My name is Sebastiaan Deckers and I am one of the two developers of the RhymBox software. Allow me to explain why the IM server is currently down and why there has not been any new release of RhymBox since May 2003.

For over 3 years, Dries Staelens and I have worked on the RhymBox instant messaging client [1.]. We are not some big corporation. We are just two young guys from Belgium with an idea. It has brought us much joy to see so many people using our software.

Unfortunatly the rhymbox.com domain has now been stolen by a man named Justin Fisher and his wife Claudia Orsi, living in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA.

They falsely claim to have acquired the domain name and rights to the RhymBox software. That is simply not true.

They formed a company named "RhymBox, LLC" in the state of Florida, lying to us about how we would be involved, how they would fund the RhymBox project, and how they would seek other investors so that RhymBox could grow more quickly.

The truth however, is far from that.

Neither Dries nor myself had any say in the organization of RhymBox, LLC. We were not paid any money. We have not been issued shares in the company. We are not even employees of that company. Justin Fisher contributed nothing to the RhymBox project. No investors were found. No one helped us work on RhymBox at all.

Naturally Dries and I grew tired of this, so we sent a cease and desist letter [2.] to Justin Fisher and Claudia Orsi.

This effectively ended any relationship between RhymBox, LLC and the RhymBox software and domain name, which is the property of Dries Staelens and me.

Unfortunatly Justin Fisher, true only to his deceitful nature, has conned eNom, Inc., our DNS registrar, [3.] into believing that he owns the domain name by showing them the registration of the company called "RhymBox, LLC." [4.] This enabled him to move the website, email server, and Jabber server to another IP address, which he now controls.

That is why all instant messaging addresses on the rhymbox.com server (eg. cbas@rhymbox.com) are not working anymore.

We call upon you, users of RhymBox, to help us take back the domain so that the RhymBox project can be continued.